Hydra Poesis is currently in creative stasis—not dead, but resting incredibly deeply. Ideas are being pursued in other spaces, forms and collaborations. Expect this sleeping body to awaken, on or around March 6, 2019.

We said goodbye to our home for 10 years. The Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts Studios was a hub for independent arts practice and experimentation and Hydra Poesis was a founding resident company throughout its journey. Our massive thanks to pvi collective for their work leading the building and to all the peers who made it fantastically unwieldy, esoteric, generous and regularly febrile in its productive energies.

Over the last 18 months Hydra Poesis has hosted artists exploring what the internet means for performance for them. In partnership with DADAA inc (Disability in the Arts, Disadvantage in the Arts Australia) a massive range of experimental broadcasts, artworks, performances and documents were created. The project has wrapped for now but new iterations of the partnership are in the pipeline.

Didactic Tools opens in November and kicks off with a workshop Symposium for peers working in knowledge and cultural practices who want to participate in peer-to-peer exchange, explore open source practices and non-hierarchical methodologies of cultural production.

Below is information on the exhibition but head OVER HERE for info on the Workshop Symposium and to RSVP by taking our 10 minute online learning module.

While the company is hibernating in cryostat, director Sam Fox is working as a producer with Hydra collaborative alumni on some incredible projects. Earlier this year Sam came on board as producer with Ololo artists Steve Berrick and Steven Buckles to bring their interactive and robo-authoritarian Polololice to Dark Mofo. In 2019 he is working with long time collaborator Rachel Arianne Ogle on a return season of her acclaimed Precipice and assisting with a soon-to-be-announced world premiere of new work.

Hydra Poesis is currently in creative stasis—not dead, but resting incredibly deeply. Ideas are being pursued in other spaces, forms and collaborations. Expect this sleeping body to awaken, on or around March 6, 2019.

Didactic Tools opens in November and kicks off with a workshop Symposium for peers working in knowledge and cultural practices who want to participate in peer-to-peer exchange, explore open source practices and non-hierarchical methodologies of cultural production.

Below is information on the exhibition but head OVER HERE for info on the Workshop Symposium and to RSVP by taking our 10 minute online learning module.

Hydra Poesis’ award winning film Liberty In The Dark is getting another playing this week in Hong Kong as part of Nat Cursio’s micro-festival/performance platform Private Dances. It’s a very cool place for our short to play at this moment in time… Hoping it resonates and carries solidarity with it. Follow it here

the photographs above show the heads of PROMPTER’s ‘online chorus’ (Tariro Mavondo and Dickie Beau) upon the bodies of the onstage performers. What was particularly great was that, by using teleprompters, the audience could watch the point of view of the telepresent characters (because the camera shoots through the mirrored face of the mediated performer).

Zeb Parkes is a radical film maker from WA. He covers a huge amount of activism and has shot this documentary of the National Refugee Rights Convergence. The film gives a detailed account of the Australian detention system and features the Dance Journalists in the final action.

and here is an article by Curtin journalism student Jessica Ibacache who accompanied us on the Dance Journalism trip.

If Wikileaks helped revitalise narratives by revealing behind-the-scenes dialogues of power, has it – as a phenomena and an organisation, now (or over the course of the last two years) slipped back into the known, dominant narrative structure as the drama of its principle and figurehead eclipses the stories WL exists to distribute?

For our last weekend in Melbourne with Personal Political Physical Challenge we are going to have an open conversation facilitated by Malthouse Theatre’s resident dramaturge Van Badham with Sam Fox (Hydra director), members of the cast, and anyone who wants to join, ask difficult questions or listen in.

We will talk about some of the motivations and characteristics of PPPC, particularly looking at hybrid work, the need for difference in our cultural context and the importance of breaking down or carefully mistreating form in contemporary performance.